Lamont Pride in court on Tuesday (AP).

Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg vocally spoke out against a judge who released without bail Lamont Pride, the 27-year-old charged with fatally shooting Officer Peter Figoski during a robbery early Monday morning. Today Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes and a spokesman for the New York courts lashed back at hizzoner for throwing the blame around. "It's not unusual," Hynes said. "Judges have complete discretion on how they assess bail."

In his remarks, Bloomberg told reporters that, "The reason [Pride] was not behind bars the last time is that a judge here in New York not only didn't put him behind bars, she didn't even think it was appropriate for bail. And he had a long history of not showing up. He had a long criminal record." But today Hynes called BS on Bloomberg: "To suggest ... that there is some complicity in the death of this heroic police officer, I think, is really over the top."

Pride, who was wanted on an outstanding warrant for a shooting in North Carolina (a warrant that didn't allow for extradition), was set loose by Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Evelyn Laporte in November—despite a prosecutor requesting that bail be set at $2,500 because of the outstanding warrant.

Bloomberg also pithily commented yesterday that, "Common sense says don't let him out until you make one phone call. It's not a lot of work to do to protect the public." To that end, today courts spokesman David Bookstaver shot back that such a call would have been inappropriate for a judge to make: "There was nothing that was unclear. The warrant was quite clear," he saidand then added, that "the phone call would certainly not have been made by the judge." And anyway, "To conclude that [Laporte's] bail decision resulted in the tragic death of Officer Figoski is simply unfair speculation."